Thursday, September 12, 2013

Coming Home to the Pleistocene

Paul Shepard (1925-1996) was a human ecologist and a
turbocharged original thinker who spent his life trying to understand (a) how
ordinary animals like us managed to evolve into a highly destructive swarm, and
(b) how we could correct this.Genetic
evolution is the primary engine of change for all forms of life, except
humans.With humans, history and culture
have changed us far more, and much faster.

Shepard’s research came to conclusions that did not thrill
the stodgy professors of mainstream academia.He was more or less dismissed as a nutjob.Most of his fame came after he died, when a
new generation of fresh minds discovered an underappreciated genius.His masterpiece, Coming Home to the Pleistocene, summed
up the scholarly pilgrimage of his life.He wrote it as cancer was drawing the curtains on his life.

The Pleistocene epoch was the era of ice ages.It began between 2.6 and 1.6 million years
ago (definitions vary), and concluded about 11,700 years ago.It was during this time that the hominid line
slowly evolved into Homo
sapiens.The Upper (or Late)
Pleistocene spanned from 126,000 to 11,700 years ago, and it was the zenith of
humankind, Shepard concluded.Then, the
weather warmed up and stabilized, farmers and herders fell out of the sky, and
all hell broke loose.

The frantic 10,000-year whirlwind that transformed healthy
wild foragers into berserk consumers is a mere eye blink in the human journey.Our genome is mostly unchanged from the
Pleistocene, but the cultures of civilization have mutated into a catastrophic
snowballing nightmare. (Old Norse tales
described berserkers,
warriors who became so possessed with battle rage that they couldn’t turn it
off.They killed everyone in sight,
including family and friends.)

Back in the Pleistocene, our wild ancestors lived in a sacred
world where everything, both animate and inanimate, was spiritually alive.They were healthy, strong, and had a
nutritious diet.They lived in small
groups, and were skilled at cooperation, conflict resolution, and sharing.Women were not second-class.Folks spent their entire lives in Big Mama
Nature’s magnificent cathedral.

Wild people were highly attuned to their ecosystem.They paid acute attention to every scent,
sound, and flicker.Because they were
both predators and prey, survival required them to pay complete attention to
reality, all the time.Unlike the human
livestock in corporate cubicle farms, our wild ancestors were intensely alive,
and they lived authentically, in the manner for which evolution had fine-tuned
them.Even today, all newborns are wild
animals, expecting to spend their lives in a wild world.Sadly, every critter in the cubicle farm has
the time-proven genes of Pleistocene hunter-gatherers, but not their
time-proven culture — a profound deviation.

Shepard increasingly comprehended the tragedy of what had
been lost: “Through writing and contemplation over the years, I have somehow
bonded firmly to those ancient ancestors, their society and ecology, and this
kinship has guided my writing and thinking.” He spent his boyhood hunting and fishing in
rural Missouri.Later he spent two
decades in Los Angeles, and residing in a super-nightmare undoubtedly sharpened
his perceptions of modernity’s pathology.

With the arrival of agriculture, folks shifted from being
nature, to controlling nature.We became
dependent on the products of domestication, and population clusters swelled and
bloated.Domestication created “a
catastrophic biology of nutritional deficiencies, alternating feast and famine,
health and epidemic, peace and social conflict, all set in millennial rhythms
of slowly collapsing ecosystems.”

Most animals have numerous offspring that mature rapidly,
with few surviving to adulthood.Humans
have few offspring, we mature slowly, and our lives pass through many phases.Wild cultures guided people through these
phases, so that they could smoothly move down the path, living in balance from
birth to death.Today, 8-year olds spend
much of their time surrounded by other 8-year olds.In wild communities, they normally lived
amidst people of all ages.Every day was
lived in the presence of the extended family.Grandma and grandpa were never far away, nor were aunties and uncles.

Shepard believed that modern cultures do an especially
terrible job at guiding newborns through their first two years, and through the
crucial transition from adolescence to adulthood.When a phase is not successfully completed,
this failure can permanently arrest the development process.“We slide into adult infantility and its
neurotic symptoms,” a widespread problem in the modern world.Many never develop a mature sense of social
responsibility or emotional stability.Imagine jamming 14 million Pleistocene hunter-gatherers into the culture
of twenty-first century Los Angeles.

Shepard’s tour visited a wide variety of other topics.His analysis of pastoralism gave me quite a
thump.Domestication replaced intelligent
and powerful elk and deer with “total potato-heads” like cattle and sheep.Potato-heads were not sacred wild beings
worthy of respect, they were just personal property — status tokens — the
bedrock foundation of every insane society.The more potato-heads you own, the bigger man you are.Nothing was more important than status, and
it was impossible to have too much.

Once herders discovered the thrill of having enormous sweaty hairy
horses between their legs, the age of warriors rose to great heights.Mighty mounted warriors raided other camps to
swipe their potato-heads, killing anyone who objected.They also welcomed visiting raiders with
spears, arrows, and impolite remarks.

When the Navajo acquired potato-heads from the Spanish, their
traditional foraging culture was destroyed, according to James Mischke, a social
scientist at Diné College.Horses
provided high mobility, and the raiding game led to an era of devastating tribal
warfare. “The rise at that time of the
hero/warrior was far more disastrous for Navajo society than the advent of
colonial militarism two centuries later.”

Eventually, the lords of the cavalry joined up with the lords
of civilization to conquer vast empires of status tokens.Captured people were penned and
exploited.No settlement was ever safe
from the raids of mounted warriors.Consequently, humans were reduced helpless flocks of sheep that required
the protection of mighty vigilant shepherds.

The Judeo-Christian culture was born in a pastoral world.In my digital Bible, the words “flock” and
“horse” each appear 100 times, and “shepherd” appears 83 times.“As I live, saith the Lord GOD, surely
because my flock became a prey, and my flock became meat to every beast of the
field, because there was no shepherd…” (Ezekiel 34: 8).

Our wild Pleistocene ancestors needed no shepherds, because
their world was not roaring mad.They
were safe.There were no hordes of mounted
warriors to live in fear of, just assorted local predators.

This book is juicy because it presents us with ideas that are
contrary to almost everything we believe — at a time when our crazy culture is
ravaging the planet.Shepard rips our
worldview inside out, and the shocking result presents a reasonable imitation
of coherence.Is it possible that our
modern consumer wonderland is not, in fact, paradise?Could there really be better ways to live?Are we mentally capable of wrapping our heads
around other modes of perception?

Shepard clearly understood that it was impossible for us to
march out of our freak show malls and promptly return to a Pleistocene way of
life, but he did have powerful dreams that we could heal over time. Right now, we could begin recovering forgotten
social principles and spiritual insights. Right now, we could begin weaning ourselves
from addictions and illusions.

He knew that all humans share the same Pleistocene genome,
and that our genetic memories all trace back to a common ancestral culture in
Africa.Long-term human survival
requires that our cultures reintegrate with nature.It’s important to understand how we got lost,
and where we came from.Shepard tosses
us a lump of hopium: “We humans are instinctive culture makers; given the
pieces, the culture will reshape itself.”Will it?

I discovered your blog and enjoyed going through it. In the mid seventies I read 'tender carnivore and sacred game' and it was an eye-opener. When I wanted to buy a personal copy, it was out of print. Me Shapard was kind enough to send me one. If you have not read it, please do. It is still available.

Amaranth, I've read Tender Carnivore, but haven't reviewed it here. On this blog I've reviewed The Others, Nature and Madness, and Coming Home to the Pleistocene. Tender Carnivore was an early work. His thinking evolved with time. Thank you!

I was thinking to myself that this authentic wild life we used to live thousands of years ago might have been admirable in some ways but it wasn't safe or comfortable. Modern civilisation may be ravaging the planet but it gives us chocolate and movies and (generally) protection from ending up as food for something big with sharp teeth. So you can see that the way we live now is quite appealing despite its impact and what would seem to be its imminent demise.

Anynomous, Only through an extremely narrow lens by which safety and comfort are measured using strictly short-term, individualistic, physical criteria do any of the claims in your response hold up. Not only does it totally overlook civilization's effects on psychological, emotional and spiritual safety and comfort over every term, short or long, it also overlooks all the microscopic "teeth" that are gnawing away at an ever-increasing proportion of the population -- from mounting radioactivity to the plethora of rapidly expanding and ever-more-nasty chronic autoimmune and neurological 'diseases of civilization' compounded by the growing toxicity we're inflicting on the Earth (and thus on ourselves) by falling for the 'better living through chemistry' propaganda. Once we factor these in and then add the bothersome fact that all of it is entirely unsustainable (and only makes the world a more ravaged place the longer it persists), well, invoking the appeal of chocolate and movies and protection from predators (that have, at this point, been largely extirpated) to account for our present and ongoing choices doesn't quite add up.